


a gift of fabric

by ivyspinners



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Gen Mini-Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-13 10:23:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4518231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyspinners/pseuds/ivyspinners
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once a week in the afternoon, Sophia meets Faith for coffee, and to lounge in the heat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a gift of fabric

**Author's Note:**

> For multi-genfic [Narrative Challenge Bingo](http://multi-genfic.livejournal.com/11981.html). Card 7, _anthropomorphism_. Finally reading book 14 jerked me back into fandom, and Kelsey said "Psy/Changeling girls" so this happened.

The ritual is still new enough that Sophia isn't certain what to think of it.

Once a week in the afternoon, Sophia meets Faith for coffee, and to lounge in the heat. Laughter fills the air, words of nothing spill around them, and the sun warms Sophia's face. It's still an adventure, this art of smiling in public, though her lips quirk as though they've a mind of their own. Sophia's not sure she's mastered it yet, but no one here seems to mind.

School has just finished. Humans and Changelings stream past their table, chasing one another, laughing. In the bustle, they are an unexpected point of stillness, until Faith slides something across their tiny table.

Faith opens her mouth, pauses as another group of young Changelings run past, shouting, and smiles. "A gift."

"At this rate, I'll never pay you back," Sophia says, but she's smiling too. There are no records of give and take kept when it comes to friendship, her mind reminds her heart.

It is, Sophia sees when she opens the box, a pair of gloves, so dark they look black. No, lighter, she realises, when she lays her own set of gloves beside them. They are closer to indigo, cool and inviting. Her fingers graze against the fabric, which she can't quite feel yet, but seems to draw her in.

The gloves beg to curl against her fingers. Her hand skitters above it; her skin is learning sensation again for the first time in years, and it's reluctant to have another barrier to the outside world. To _feeling_.

On their part, the gloves coating her hands seem to tighten accusingly, the longer she stares. They had protected her for so long. Sophia had never been fascinated by them, as she is by Faith's gift.

"It's different," Faith says, " _touch_. I spent so long not knowing it at all, it was a shock to learn there were _nuances_. Sensations."

Faith had been isolated, too. All of them were.

Sophia's eyes flick up, and apology within. "Not out here."

But later that night, when she's at home -- not alone, never alone -- and feeling experimental, she takes Faith's gift out again.

She slips them on.

The fabric seems to melt against her skins, lush and soft, cradling. A feast for her fingertips and palms.

fin


End file.
